Earrings
by shellalana
Summary: Gaige has an unfortunate accident with a Tediore rocket launcher.


Everything and then nothing. The chaos that erupted around Gaige all crunched together into silence and darkness, leaving her drifting in a void, not of her own choosing. If only she'd had the time to make sense of it all before shock claimed her. She could have found the answers to everything that bothered her in that place of tranquility.

Where she went and for how long, she didn't know. All she did when she awoke was that there was a headache so intense, it vibrated all the way down to her teeth. Her tongue lazily checked her mouth to ensure they were still intact. The taste of blood, however, was surprising. Trying to move was an exercise in futility as every nerve fibre in her body screamed to be left alone. It would grant her one small blessing: the ability to open her eyes.

Everything was blurry at first. Blue sky. Rising plumes of smoke. The sun was too bright and made it hard to keep them open. That's when she noticed a distant static that she really couldn't make out. Her hearing was muffled too, with a faint ringing that only exacerbated the headache.

She closed her eyes again to focus her thoughts. What had she been doing before all this mess? When nothing came to mind, she went back further in the day. She'd got up this morning, made herself some coffee and... was it toast? Or leftovers from last night?

The nauseous churning of her stomach didn't help the answer to that question.

She knew she ate something; the what wasn't important. Then... finetuning her arm? And then someone had stopped by asking for... The words were garbled and the face was a fuzzy mess. They were asking about...

A nearby shockwave shook her from her thoughts and by the ribs. The painful wheeze that escaped her said as much: one of them was likely broken and putting pressure on her lung. Great. She was going to die drowning in her own blood. How pathetic.

Inch by inch, she searched her person for her Echo for what felt like hours. Finding her pockets empty, she chanced a search of the area and found nothing with the limited mobility in her neck.

She just needed a break, she told herself. A few minutes of rest and then she could start moving again through the pain.

When she opened her eyes next, the tranquil blue of the sky had faded to an angrier orange. Much longer than she wanted and her life was in even more danger. Either the cold of night would come and claim her or the hungry skags would come out to play and turn her into a chew toy. Gaige wasn't sure which was worse. Without the dizziness, however, the pain she'd experienced earlier had finetuned themselves into sharp points: one in her hand and another on the side of her head. As her hand came into view, the stains of red told her just how bad her situation really was. Her fingers were stuck together with dried blood and she noticed that something was awry. One of her fingers was shorter than it should be. A grizzled mess of flesh and broken bone protruded from the end. Half of her pinky was missing.

Okay, okay, that's not too bad. It's just a finger. You can still breathe and your legs don't hurt. How much worse could it be?

She turned her attention to her head next. The fact that she still had coherent thought likely meant that she didn't have a concussion anymore. Her good fingers drifted over her scalp to find more blood there, cold and sticky. Her hair was plastered down to everything, and everything ached to her touch. More blood, more ruptured flesh; there was no metal of her piercings meeting her touch. In fact, there was only a stump left of what should have been her ear.

Gaige swore inwardly at her circumstances. Fueled by rage, she gave up on being calm and pushed herself to her feet. She ignored the pain that doubled her over, the still-dangerous rib crushing her rib. If she could've, she would've sliced herself open and ripped the damn thing out if it meant not being in pain anymore. If it meant she could get out of his hellhole and back to her place. Or a hypo machine.

Then she smelled it. A musty stink of piss and garbage that could only mean one thing. She heard it before she saw it, a skag poking around the edge of a destroyed Technical. It was dragging his face around in the dirt, snuffling at what scent of blood it could find. Thankfully, Gaige wasn't the only bloodied body lying around. There were several bandits, all in worse states than her current one, many of them missing entire limbs. Plumes of dust rose around the skag's head as it exhaled and worked its savage jaws around the leg stump of the nearest dead bandit.

Gaige glanced over her shoulder. The nearest Catch-A-Ride wasn't for another mile or two and she wasn't sure she could get that far on foot. Turning and running could also give the skag something to chase, a more exciting prey than a dead bandit. That's when she saw the familiar stripes on a nearby rocket launcher, sitting in the dust a few feet away.

Tediore.

It all came back to her. She was trying out a new weapon. A small bandit camp seemed like the best place to try it out. Only when she'd reloaded, she'd been standing too close to her Technical and then-

Gaige ground her teeth together and slowly hobbled towards it. The launcher might have tried to kill her, but it would save her hide this time.

The sounds of savage chewing paused. Just a few feet more.

A scratching at the dirt. She bent down and grabbed the handle.

A wailing scream in the air as she turned to see the skag taking charge. The weight of the rocket launcher aggravated her shoulder.

The skag leapt. She pulled the trigger.

The mid-air explosion sent her hurtling to her back once more. Fresh pain erupted through her and what remained of the skag splattered all over her and the ground.

Another breather would be fine. And then she could get going.

But there was no way she was going to get her ear piercings back.


End file.
